Who Really Belongs? (Morning Edition)
March 10, 2027 @ 10:30 am – 12:30 pm
Who Really Belongs? A Workshop on Othering in Spiritual Community
Via Zoom with Rev. Dr. Michele Synegal & Rev. Victoria Bomberry, Ph.D
Wednesday, March 10, 2027 from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
(This workshop will also be presented on Thursday, March 18, 2027 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm)
We say “we are all one.” We build our communities around welcome, worthiness, and the truth that every person is an expression of the Divine. And yet, in nearly every spiritual community, including ours, someone is quietly treated as less “us” than everyone else. Not through cruelty. Often through habit.
A ramp that never got built. A “we don’t see color” that lets real inequity go unspoken. A leadership table that never quite widens. A newcomer who visits twice, doesn’t come back, and nobody’s sure why. This is othering. And it thrives precisely in communities built on belonging — because that’s where it’s hardest to see.
Join us for a working session built for the people who shape the tone of our communities from the inside. This isn’t a lecture on what your community is doing wrong. It’s a practical, honest working session for ministers, board members, Licensed Unity Teachers and other lay leadership who already care about belonging and want the language and tools to notice exclusion before it becomes someone’s quiet reason to stop coming back.
What we’ll explore together:
How “positive thinking” language, offered with the best of intentions, can end up silencing grief, anger, or hard truths that deserve to be heard
The invisible architecture of exclusion, who our buildings, our leadership tables, and our Sunday mornings were actually designed for
How class, familiarity, and social cliques quietly sort “insiders” from “outsiders,” even in the most welcoming rooms
Concrete leadership language and practices that widen the circle instead of narrowing it
Why now?
Our congregations are growing more diverse, in age, background, ability, and belief, at the very moment the wider world is growing more divided. The communities still gathering ten years from now will be the ones who learned, in rooms like this one, how to actually practice the oneness we preach — not just affirm it from the platform.
Who should attend?
Senior and associate ministers · board and leadership team members · Licensed Unity Teachers · anyone who shapes how a newcomer experiences their first fifteen minutes in the room.
Come ready to look honestly at your own community. Leave with a clearer eye, a fuller toolkit, and a renewed commitment to belonging that includes everyone it claims to include.
This workshop features all new content designed especially for Unity Eastern Region, and satisfies the DEI CEU requirements for credentialed Unity leaders.
Cost is $75 per ministry$25 individual and scholarships available
Presenter Bio:
Rev. Dr. Michele is the Senior Minister of Temple of Light Centre for Spiritual Living in Kingston, Jamaica. Her leadership is rooted in radical compassion, conscious guidance, and an unapologetic quest for excellence. She served the Spiritual Empowerment Center in Baltimore, Maryland, as Senior Minister for ten years. She was ordained in 2012 by the Centers for Spiritual Living,
Rev. Michele has served as a facilitator for Unity Eastern Region for more than ten years. She’s presenting a workshop in March 2027; Who Really Belongs? A session on ‘Othering” in Spiritual Community. She has become a voice for DEIA within the New Thought Movement.
Synegal is a minister for people who are tired of surface-level inspiration and ready for meaningful evolution. A bridgebuilder. A disruptor. A healer. A visionary voice calling individuals and institutions alike into deeper integrity with themselves, each other, and the Divine.
Presenter Bio:
Rev. Victoria Bomberry, Ph.D, is an ordained minister of Centers for Spiritual Living. She served as the Spiritual Director/Senior Minister at Center for Spiritual Living Menifee Valley. Before that she served at Riverside Center for Spiritual Living as the Minister of Transformation. As the Spiritual Director of the emerging focus ministry Winged Spirit her sight is set on perfecting love on the planet. She is the former Chair of the Diversity Equity Inclusion Committee of Centers for Spiritual Living. She is currently on the Sacred Activism Task Force of Centers for Spiritual Living. Dr. Bomberry recently joined the board of the Natalie Cole Regan Foundation that focuses on cancer research and early childhood literacy.
A lover of collaboration she works with Spiritual Enlightenment and Truth Focus Ministry where she leads a Power of 8 group that has been active for 9 years. She appears on New Thought Media Network’s Science of Mind and Spirit Lecture Series. She completed her ministerial studies at Holmes Institute. She received her Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. She received her B.A. in Biology and her M.A. in English from Sonoma State University.
Exploring and developing ways to serve the world, teaching, working with individuals and small groups are her passions. She has more than 45 years teaching experience, including the California State University and University of California systems and private universities, in local CSLs, Native American Communities in North and South America. She is retired from the University of California System.
Her ministry focuses on peace and the joy that accompanies it through inspired service.
